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How the Top 100 Blogs Do ‘it’

Posted By Darren Rowse 28th of November 2006 Pro Blogging News 0 Comments

Blog-Trends-Advertising-1I’ve previously done a little analysis of the blogs in the Technorati Top 100 in terms of their length of blogging so today when I came across a post by Stuart Brown (via blog herald)who has done similar work (but with some pretty pie charts) I was hooked.

Stuart analysises the Top 100 in the categories of:

  • Blogging Software – 45% of those blogs in the top 100 have custom blogging platforms with Movable Type coming in second with 15%
  • Monetisation – 79% are using some sort of advertising – 24% are using AdSense
  • Language – 84% are blogging in English
  • Topic – 21% are on Technology related topics
  • Background Colour – White is the colour of choice
  • Body Typeface – Verdana is the font of choice

There are a few interesting results there.

For starters I’m a little surprised by the large number of bloggers using custom built blogging solutions. I guess this includes the Weblogs Inc’s ‘blog smith’ platform.

On the Monetisation front – I’m not surprised to see AdSense leading the pack. I’ve previously found it to be the most popular ad platform across not only high profile blogs but across the whole spectrum of blogs. I’m also not surprised to see BlogAds on quite a few of top 100 blogs – although suspect they are not appearing on quite as high a percentage of other blogs.

I would have liked to see ‘other monetisation’ methods measured. For example I suspect if you added affiliate programs (like Amazon for example) or ‘tip jars’ that you’d see the percentage of those making money from their blogs in the top 100 increase.

PS: for more analysis of popular blogs and how they make money you might like to visit a post I wrote a year back looking at the top 30 most visited blogs from Truth Laid Bear.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I planned from day one of my blogging, two years ago, to be as big as I possibly could.

    By the end of this year I expect to be in the Technorati Top 100. (Currently #140 and rising fast!)

    By the end of 2007, I expect to be in the top 20. Yes, I’ve got ambitious goals. :)

    I use WordPress, though I have a few minor customizations here and there. I think the reason “Custom” is so large is that many of the top 100 blogs have been around for much longer than most blogging packages such as WP and MT have been available. It could also be that he threw Myspace, MSN and those things into “Custom.” He wasn’t clear if he categorized those anomalous blogs as “Custom” or “Other.”

    I use AdSense, Text Link Ads, and several affiliate programs such as Amazon and CJ. I also have the occasional ad I sold myself, such as the one currently in my sidebar. I will probably drop Text Link Ads in the near future as they have proven to be too difficult to deal with.

    Verdana is the THIRD choice in my CSS font selection. The first two are Lucida Grande (Macs use this) and Bitstream Vera Sans (Linux boxes use this).

    These stats are all interesting to look at, but the thing everyone seems to miss is that it’s your CONTENT that matters. Drive in all the traffic you want, but they aren’t going to stick around, or come back, if you don’t have top quality content.

  2. That’s cool. I loove the pie charts too. I just started a blog in a very neglected space (problem solving), so I am hoping to start generating some traffic, and a lot of your tips and even older articles are gold. Thanks.

  3. Nice charts, thanks for sharing.

  4. Interesting. I’m guessing AdSense remains popular with larger publishers as I believe once you hit a certain level you are more able to negotiate the ToS and revenue share with Google. I would imagine some of the top blogs fall into this category.

    Interesting to see over one-fifth of people not using ads at all, but as you say they could be using affiliate programmes that aren’t covered here.

  5. yeah – you could be right Andy.

    Although – I think the premium publisher status is around 20 million impressions a month which would be bigger than most of the top 100 blogs (except for those in networks that have the collective power of multiple blogs).

  6. I’d love 20 million impressions a month! I’ll make that my goal for 2008. ;)

  7. Darren thanx for this hint, and now I will let the Champ League be Champ League!

    Greetinx from the others (Germany)

    Stefan Julius

  8. […] problogger Trackback-URL Gelesen: 1 heute:1 […]

  9. […] Para comparar com outra massa de dados interessante, veja esta pesquisa anterior de Darren Rowse sobre os top 100 blogs internacionais.            […]

  10. Nice article, I am not surprised about adsense but I would be real interested to know how much money the top blogs are earning monthly from the adsense ads. Do you know?

  11. That is by far the best breakdown and pie chart I have found on any blog so far. I notice you really give adsense allot of credit and wonder if you have heard of project wonderful and adgridwork, and if you see any value in these. they are more on the level of advertising others on your site and receiving free ad time on other sites within your niche and the project wonderful will pay you or you can use the credit to purchase your own ad time. I have just used both this week and like the idea of them but have not had them up long enough to tell. Just wondered what your thoughts were.

  12. This is an interesting analysis. As a Web Designer some of these results would help me while designing UIs and testing usability, accessibility issues.

    Thanks!

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